Yikes
SCHOOL SPIRIT
BEGA, NSW – Teachers and students at the high school here are cool with their poltergeist. Much like a Year 9 student on muck-up day, the spirit enjoys flicking off lights in the assembly hall and moving chairs to random corners overnight. Just another ghost yarn, you’re thinking, but Bega’s bogey has reasonable grounds. The school sits on top of the town’s first cemetery. Constant flooding early last century compelled the shire to relocate the loved ones, though many ancestors knocked back offers of exhumation. We can all do with a bit more education, ran the logic, even in the afterlife. [Corner of Upper and Eden Sts]
PARLIAMENTARY X-FILES
CANBERRA, ACT – Elvira is black, cool and curvaceous, and a 1967 Cadillac hearse. Tim the Yowie Man – a self-claimed ‘cryptonaturalist’ who likes to hunt for Brindabella bigfoots in his spare time – joins Allan the Hearse Whisperer as your Destiny Tours hosts. The pair will recount tales of a War Memorial poltergeist, disembodied screams in the embassy, the death train, the car-friendly lake, the skeleton in Duntroon’s closet, a spy-riddled funeral parlour and the prime ministerial ghost who can’t seem to find the pub’s exit. Elvira, in fact, offers the ride of your life. [Tours operate on the last Friday and Saturday of each month, barring December. Cost $49 for a 90-minute marvel. Phone Allan Levinson, who also runs Elvira (plus the grey Cadillac Morticia around Sydney’s spook sites) on 02-9402-5676 or 0414-232-224.]
MASKED AVENGER
DUBBO, NSW – Robert Rice Howard was a handsome man who drove hansom cabs in Woolloomoolloo, until tragedy struck. Howard fell off his carriage and became horribly disfigured. Poor wretch lost his nose and gained the nickname Nosy Bob. Too grotesque for cab duties, Nosy Bob became hangman at the jail here during the 1870s. The mask he wore seemed tailor-made – two eyes and no nose. It hangs, as you’d expect, with the jail’s museum. [Macquarie Street, open 9-4.30 daily. Entry $7, $5.50 and $3.50. Adults-only tours also available at night. Phone 02-6882-8122.]
CORPSE IN THE COPSE
GAWLER, SA – Two surveyors, Light and Finniss were camped by the South Para River in 1839. There they found a skeleton caked in clay, and buried upright inside a tree. A native they dimly surmised, as the ‘skull [was] of rather limited intellectual development’ but then the campers noticed the bloody clothes – shirt, vest, corduroy strides with the pockets inside-out. No inquest was held. No name was ascribed to the corpse. With all shameless speed, they buried the bones in Christian fashion and ascribed a name to the campsite – Dead Man’s Pass. [Behind the Shell station on Murray Street.]
BEER KRAIT
MARRAWAH, TAS – Dippy Flint caught the granddaddy of snakes in 1990. His two-metre tiger hangs above the pub’s fireplace like a bishop’s stole. And those with a serpentine bent can also marvel at the pickled varieties behind the bar, freaks and fetuses included. So rapt in snakes was the former publican that the Marrawah Hotel has become a fork-tongued focal point. Just ask about the king brown the ex-owner kept in the deep-freezer. You’ll look at the phrase ‘crowd management’ in a brand-new light. [Come Back Road, Green Point. Phone 03-6457-1102]
HELL AND HIGH WATER
OGMORE, Q – Can you think of a more infernal address than the Styx River Hotel on Charon’s Ferry Road? As a tourist town, Ogmore has yet to join the mainstream, but that may change if public access is granted to see Australia’s most dramatic tidal bore. The phenomenon occurs every full moon, a knee-high surge racing up the Styx and spewing into the floodplain. Publican Gordon Campbell, he of the diabolical address, says the tidal wave turns Outback desert into wetlands in a blink. But unless a few farmers soften on the ‘tourism threat’ then Hell looks a more plausible stopover. [About 190 kms south of Mackay is the dirt turnoff to Ogmore.]
ON THE BEACH
PORT MACDONNELL – The first wreck in this area, the Southern Ocean coast south of Mount Gambier, occurred before Port MacDonell existed. A wooden schooner, the J Lovett ran aground in 1852. Prone to looting, the ship sat stranded for 14 months, guarded by her disgraced captain. His sentry duties ended in 1853 when two locals with a penchant for port wine ran a razor across the skipper’s throat. Three years later, in the interests of greater vigilance, the Port was conceived. In fact the town’s lighthouse (built in 1860) was often the first sign of Australia visible to migrants traveling the ‘Great Circle’ route, via Antarctica.
SAME BAT CHANNEL
ROCKHAMPTON, Q – Bent-wing bats have faces (and habits) that only a bent-wing mother could love. So don’t expect a beauty pageant when 80,000 of the little critters flash past your nose at the Bat Cleft, in Mount Etna National Park. The cave is the crèche for more than three-quarters of Australia’s bent-wings. Around twilight you can grab a safety line and peer into the storm’s heart, an experience no horror movie can duplicate. You’ll even see the odd infanticide, as diamond pythons and tree frogs gorge on the daycare’s release. [Caves are 24 kms north of town, off Bruce Highway. Tours run Nov-Feb only, on Mon, Wed, Fri and Sat, for $7.45, $4.90, $3.70 or $22.20 family. Rigorous walking involved. Enquiries 07-4936-0511]
THE EXPLORER’S EYE
YASS, NSW – Milton Niemenen is the Yass and District Museum’s main curator, and he swears by the roving eyes of Hamilton Hume. A portrait of our first homegrown explorer hangs in the rear section. No matter where you stand, says Milton, old Hamilton is watching you. He’s also watching the so-called yowie wool also displayed. [Open Sat & Sun, 10-4, or when Milton’s in town. Entry $2 and 50c. Phone 02-6226-2315]
ODDITIONS
Next time you want to let rip on the putt-putt green, head for Nostalgia Town at Pacific Paradise (Q) where the whole golf course is designed on a cemetery theme.
In the Visitors’ Centre at Newman (WA), a hotchpotch of bottled bugs shows you how scale tends to magnify in the outback. On show are centipedes, wolf spiders, crickets and cockroaches that each warrants its own horror movie. The giant of the pack, though, is the well-named buffalo beetle.
On the wall at the Fisherman’s Club in Eden (NSW) is a thresher shark with a human arm jutting form its jaws.
Skill meets skull at the Boadicea Shop & Gallery in Augathella (Q) where a shelf-load of painted sheep skulls await your caress. [Main St. Phone 07-4654-5116]